268 POLITICAL SCIENCE.
corruption. Athens was the most remarkable example of
this breaking up of executive power into fragments. Thus,
the treasurer, the generals, the archons, the petty police
magistrates, and a host of others were entirely independent
of one another, were liable to be accused, or required to pre-
sent accounts or reports to boards like the logistce and euth-
yni, and to be accused before assemblies of the people.
So, in aristocratic Rome, consuls, praetors, sediles, censors,
tribunes, were un'der no law to obey each other's orders ; each
class of magistrates might be controlled by another class, but
could only move within a certain tolerably well-defined
sphere. This principle seems almost necessary for a repub-
lic, if it would not fall into the evil of a personal government
ending in a tyrannis. In the separate states of our Ameri-
can system the same course is followed. The governor has
little appointing or removing power, and his supervisory
control consists chiefly in bringing officers charged with
malfeasance to trial through the public prosecutors. In the
general government the president has a place and relation
to all officers of the government, except the judges, which
even an old Roman would be alarmed at, and which now
constitutes the chief motive, the central spring of our inter-
nal politics, as well as the chief danger for our national purity
and stability.
Together with the splitting up of official duties and the al-
most entire want of subordination of office-holders among
themselves, we find in a few states a duality of political officers
with the same functions. Of this the Roman constitution
affords to us the most remarkable examples, which first occur,
as far as we know, after the fall of the^ kings. This duality
differs from the plan on which, in aristocratic politics, execu-
tive councils are often instituted, where a majority of three,
five, or some larger number, decides on all questions within
the council's competence. The two Roman consuls, on the
other hand, had each separately the entire power of their
office, and were not bound to ask each other's counsel The
power of the kings was not cut in two and half given to each,